CHAPTER VI. 



ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 



IT is difficult to realize the wealth, the variety, the diversity, 

 of "animal life." Even if we endeavour to pass in review 

 all that we have seen in woodland and meadow, in pond 

 or pool, in the air, on the earth, in the waters, in temperate 

 or tropical regions ; even when we try to remember the 

 results of all anatomical and microscopic investigation dis- 

 playing new wonders and new diversities hidden from 

 ordinary and unaided vision ; even when we call to mind 

 the multifarious contents, recent and fossil, of all the 

 natural history museums we have ever visited, and throw 

 in such mental pictures as we have formed of all the diverse 

 adaptations we have read about or heard described ; even 

 so we cannot but be conscious that not one-tenth, not one- 

 hundredth, part of the diversity and variety of animal life 

 has passed before our mental vision even in sample. It is 

 said that our greatest living poet once, when a young man, 

 left his companions to gaze into the waters of a clear, still 

 pool. " What an imagination God has ! " he said, as he 

 rejoined his friends. Fit observation for the poet, whose 

 sensitive nature must be keenly alive to the varied endow- 

 ments which Nature has lavishly showered upon her 

 animate children. 



Certain it is that words, mere words, can never present, 

 though they may aid in recalling, an adequate picture of 

 either the wealth or the beauty of animal life. Fortunately 

 for those who visit London (and who nowadays does not ?), 

 we have, in our national collection in South Kensington, 

 the means of getting some insight into the wealth of life. 



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